Extell Adds 30% More Rooms at Midtown Hotel Project

Gary Barnett’s Extell Development wants to squeeze more juice from a development site in Midtown, at the northwest corner of West 54th Street and Seventh Avenue, by adding more than 100 new units to a proposed 40-story tower.

The developer plans to build 512 units from 180,000 square feet of residential space at 201 West 54th Street, according to new DOB filings, up from the 400 units previously planned at the site. The size of the building will remain the same, about 210,000 square feet.

The average room size, penciling to 350 square feet, hints at a hotel development. SLCE Architects, which designed the Hard Rock Hotel with Extell, is the architect of record.

Following the passage of a rule expected to limit Airbnb rentals in New York City, Extell may look to bring nearly 1,400 new hotel rooms to a two-block radius east of Broadway between West 54th and West 56th Street. The developer is planning 670 units at 1710 Broadway, also with an average size of about 350 square feet, and 208 rooms at the former Wellington Hotel at 871 Seventh Avenue.

Although some hotels never reopened after the pandemic, a large pipeline of new hospitality projects has increased the number of hotel rooms from nearly 132,000 in 2019. At the start of the year, New York was scheduled to add more than 10,000 rooms — or about 8.5 percent of the inventory. The average daily room rate stood at $264 during the first seven months of the year, according to hospitality data firm STR, an increase of about 8 percent from a year ago.

The rise in revenue may help developers justify new projects, which has required approval by the City Council since a 2021 law passed by the de Blasio administration. The regulation was seen as a way to ensure that only unionized hotels would get built.